Identifying and Advocating Best Practices in the Criminal Justice System. A Texas-Centric Examination of Current Conditions, Reform Initiatives, and Emerging Issues with a Special Emphasis on Capital Punishment.

The arson
expert at the center of a death penalty storm said Thursday that the
political fight over whether Cameron Todd Willingham was wrongly
executed is obscuring a broader problem: flawed science that is failing
the justice system.

Dr. Craig Beyler, a Harvard-educated engineer
and chairman of the International Association for Fire Safety Science,
said he is frustrated by Gov. Rick Perry's attack over his finding that
there's no proof that arson caused the 1991 Corsicana fire that killed
Willingham's three children.

Willingham, protesting his innocence, was executed in 2004 after Perry reviewed the case.

Perry
said Thursday that Beyler had lost his credibility and exposed his
political agenda by criticizing the governor's actions and calling
Perry's changes to a forensic-science panel unethical.

"I would
suggest to you that if you look at the bulk of Mr. Beyler's remarks
over the last days and weeks, you will see a very politically driven
agenda," Perry said during a visit to a Richardson high school. "This
is a politically driven agenda by a group of people."

Beyler has
been reluctant to speak publicly on the investigation, and late
Wednesday, he said in an e-mail that Perry should stay out of the
subsequent investigation because he approved the execution of
Willingham.

And:

Beyler said his criticism of Perry stems from the governor's dismantling and upending the work of the commission.

"Whether
he just didn't have a clue that he had a conflict of interest, which I
suppose that's plausible, or he chose not to do the right thing, I
can't tell you," Beyler said.

The scientist said the governor's
inference that Beyler is motivated by sentiment against the death
penalty is absurd, though he declined to say what his belief on the
topic is.

"There can be legitimate findings of murder by arson,
and there can illegitimate ones. Both exist. And I had no preconceived
notion as to which this was," he said of the Willingham case.

He
said his greatest concern is that the political fight is burying the
real work, which was alluded to by a recent National Academy of
Sciences report that stated there are problems throughout the forensic
sciences and what is being presented in courtrooms today.

"This
is simply a specific example of a wake-up call to the broad notion that
forensic sciences need help and work. This is not something unique to
Texas. It's a national issue," Beyler said.

He said the Willingham case, and another he looked at involving Ernest Ray Willis,
who was subsequently released from Texas' death row, revealed the same
pattern of shoddy forensic work that relied more upon folklore than
science.

In Willingham's case, the investigators' theory of the
fire is "inconsistent with eyewitness testimony," he said. In addition,
the key markers they pointed to as indications of arson have all been
discredited by more recent fire science, and both investigators
testified that alternate explanations existed for what had happened.

"My
scope of work was to show whether it was arson or not, and I concluded
that they had not," Beyler said. "Some people would say if it's not
arson, it's not murder. I didn't connect those dots, but most people
would."

Shortly before his execution, Cameron Todd Willingham reminded his
former wife of his threat to "take away what's most precious of hers"
if she tried to leave him, a former brother-in-law said Thursday.

Tracy
Kuykendall said his twin sister, Stacy, recounted the conversation with
her ex to her family in February 2004. Kuykendall said he interpreted
Willingham's remarks as an admission that he set the fire that killed
his three young daughters in 1991.

"He didn't actually come out
and say, 'I killed the kids,' " Kuykendall said. "He had told Stacy
during their time together, through the beatings and all, that if she
ever left him that he would take what was most precious of hers, which
was the kids."

And:

Another
brother, Ronnie Kuykendall, told the Navarro County district attorney's
office a similar story in an affidavit he filed after the family
meeting on Feb. 8, 2004.

The affidavit, released by the Corsicana city attorney in response to an open records request from The Dallas Morning News,
was mentioned in filings the district attorney's office made to the
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Prosecutors were responding to
last-minute efforts by Willingham's defense to halt his execution on
the basis of an expert's opinion that the fatal fire was not arson.

Stacy Kuykendall could not be reached Thursday. While she has said she believes Willingham was guilty, she told the Chicago Tribune several months after his execution that he had not confessed during their meeting in prison.

Nine days before Cameron Todd Willingham was to be executed for
setting a house fire that killed his three daughters, his ex-wife
called her family together to tearfully recount a conversation with the
condemned prisoner, according to a newly released statement from
Willingham’s former brother-in-law.

"She stated that after
visiting with him for about 1 hour and 45 minutes, he told her that he
had set the fire because he knew that she was going to leave him," said
the brother of Stacy Kuykendall, Willingham’s ex-wife.

The
affidavit was one of two released by Corsicana city officials in the
Willingham case this week and seemingly contradicts Willingham’s claims
of innocence in the deaths of his children. The statements were first
reported Thursday in the Corsicana Daily Sun and later obtained by the Star-Telegram.

The statement from Ronnie Kuykendall is included in two affidavits
released this week by the city of Corsicana in response to media
requests amid suggestions that Cameron Todd Willingham may have been
innocent.

Willingham was executed on Feb. 17, 2004, after being
convicted of capital murder for the 1991 deaths of the children,
2-year-old Amber and 1-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron. Prosecutors
said he set fire to the family's Corsicana home while the children were
inside.

Forensic scientists have called into question arson
evidence used to convict Willingham, who maintained his innocence until
his death. The prosecutor who argued the case still believes Willingham
is guilty but acknowledges it would have been hard to win a death
sentence without the arson finding.

One of the affidavits is
based on a statement Kuykendall gave to Kirby Hill, then an
investigator with the district attorney's office in Navarro County.

Kuykendall
said his sister Stacy, Willingham's former wife, called her family
together on Feb. 8, 2004, to tell them about a visit with her
ex-husband, the Corsicana Daily Sun reported.

And:

Stacy Kuykendall has declined to talk to the media since her ex-husband's execution.

The
second affidavit is from a neighbor who this month gave a statement
about what he saw on the morning of the December 1991 fire.

Earlier coverage begins with this post. As I mention daily, all coverage is also available via the Todd Willingham category index.

Comments

The comments to this entry are closed.

The StandDown Texas Project

The StandDown Texas Project was organized in 2000 to advocate a moratorium on executions and a state-sponsored review of Texas' application of the death penalty.
To stand down is to go off duty temporarily, especially to review safety procedures.

Steve Hall

Project Director Steve Hall was chief of staff to the Attorney General of Texas from 1983-1991; he was an administrator of the Texas Resource Center from 1993-1995. He has worked for the U.S. Congress and several Texas legislators. Hall is a former journalist.